Der unheimliche Mönch/The Sinister Monk (1965) was Rialto’s 20th Edgar Wallace production and the last to be filmed in black and white (though with full colour credits).
It was based on Wallace’s play The Terror (1927) that he two years later also released in the form of a novella. And as if to illustrate Wallace’s seemingly endless ability to recycle his own material the play itself was actually also already a stage adaptation of his 1926 novel The Black Abbot (already filmed by Rialto as Der schwarze Abt in 1963).
That play became his second most popular one after The Ringer and was also quickly adapted for the cinema. The first adaption The Terror (1928), shot the year before the novella came out, is now mainly known for being both the first horror talkie courtesy of the vitaphone system as well as the first lost film talkie. Contemporary critics were not generous and one described it as being “so bad it is almost suicidal”.
Its accompanying slightly longer silent film version, now also lost, appears to have received slightly better accolades.
A sequel, The Return of the Terror, followed in 1934, another new adaptation, The Terror, in 1938.
Play and book are set in an old country manor built on a monastery that is now being used as a lodging house. The owner and his daughter mysteriously only appeared on the scene just about a decade prior, just at the time of a robbery where the giant loot has not yet been discovered.
Some of the villains that had been incarcerated for this appear on the scene just to be killed off by a strange hooded monk that haunts the grounds of the estate.
Scotland Yard begins investigating. An unlikely romance blossoms. And nobody is what they appear to be.
Whereas the first direct adaptations of this story more or less mirrored that plot, the Rialto movie differed quite extensively. Rialto at that time had reached the stage in their Edgar Wallace series where their films only borrowed some elements of the source novels and instead replaced large chunks with their own brand of successful Krimi tropes.
What remained was the country manor (named Darkwood Castle in the film) and the murderous monk on a rampage.
Darkwood Castle is now a boarding school for girls (well, young women by the look of things). Unbeknownst to most of his greedy family, prior to his death the previous Lord has changed his last will and made his granddaughter Gwendolin (Karin Dor) the sole heiress of his fortune. Gwendolin’s father is currently serving time in prison for murder.
Gwendolin’s scheming family plot to prevent her from gaining access to her inheritance when the testament appears to have vanished in the fires of a burning car.
Girls get kidnapped and go missing and the hooded figure of a mysterious monk eliminates some of the main protagonists one by one by breaking their necks with the help of an Australian stock whip.
Directed for the last time in the series by Harald Reinl under the typically over the top, idiosyncratic Peter Thomas score,
The Sinister Monk is one of the rare instances in the series where at least some parts of it were filmed directly in London. We clearly see some of the characters in front of well known landmarks and in actual fact during the filming some extras in Bobby outfits were spotted by real Bobbies and told to instantly change out of that costume.
I think it’s safe to say that I’ll watch and rewatch every single one of the Rialto Wallaces whenever the opportunity arises but this film is one of the more middling examples that does just as much right as it does not.
It yet again successfully mixes action scenes with bizarre murders committed by a masked villain, traditional crime elements with scenes of Gothic horror. The monk with the whip is genuinely one of the most iconic villains of the entire series and his method for murder truly memorable.
And yet it also often misses the mark.
The kidnappings and disappearances of young local women, seemingly the aspect that first connects Scotland Yard with Darkwood Castle, is barely mentioned or referenced at all in the first half of this movie so that the all out focus on it during the finale feels somewhat jarring and disconnected.
Gwendolin would also prove to be Karin Dor’s final role in a Rialto Wallace production and she gives her trademark Damsel in Distress performance that had rightfully gained her the “Miss Krimi” nickname.
What is missing, however, is someone like Joachim Fuchsberger as a male counterpart for her. Harald Leipnitz as Inspector Bratt excels in the later action scenes but initially has little to do and worst of all lacks any romantic chemistry with Dor.
His part is so lacklustre that it’s even up to Siegfried Schürenberg’s Sir John to unearth a vital clue.
The fact that Eddi Arent’s character is allowed to reveal a surprise aspect of his personality (no spoilers!) is to be recommended, however, for a large part his comic relief persona fades much more into the background than in other Wallace movies.
It is up to some of the other supporting characters to truly shine.
Rudolf Schündler’s creepy/eccentric resident “artist” Alfons Short is arguably the most memorable character in this production. He specialises in creating death masks for clients and keeps a collection of his favourites on a wall in his study. School girls he particularly lusts after also get invited for life masks and he also appears to have a penchant for cheesecake photos and carrier pigeons (who at some stage become so crucial to the plot that Scotland Yard uses helicopters to follow them... a bit of an overkill methinks).
International audiences know Ilse Steppat mainly as the sadistic Irma Bunt in her final film On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969). In The Sinister Monk, however, she plays a totally different role as a caring matriarch, Lady Patricia, who protects Gwendolin against the vile male members of her clan: Siegfried Lowitz, previously seen as Inspector Warren in Der Hexer/The Ringer (1964), is now a scheming lawyer who attempts to bag the inheritance for himself and deprive Gwendolin of what is rightfully hers. Dieter Eppler’s Sir William is not afraid to use violence to serve his goals. Hartmut Reck as Gwendolin’s cousin Ronny is particularly odious. It is implied that he is Lady Patricia’s sadistic rapist son who may already have been behind the killing of one girl in the past, leaving his mother torn between love and repulsion for her own offspring. Ronny also openly lusts after his cousin and goes as far as offering his hand in marriage in his attempt to gain access to her inheritance.
And just who is that mysterious new French tutor with zeeee reedeeculous heavy accent?
Uschi Glas was one of the boarding school girls together with Uta Levka, Dunja Reiter and Susanne Hsiao. This was her first feature film and the beginning of a long career in German cinema and on TV.
White slavery and exploitation perpetrated behind the gates of an all-female institution full with secret passageways was a popular trope for the Rialto Wallace Krimis just like seeing a heiress threatened or a greedy family with a strong matriarch. In a way this final black and white production was a potpourri of all that had made the previous Krimis so very popular and as such it is little surprise that The Sinister Monk quickly became one of the most popular and successful entries in the series, so popular in fact that just two years later Rialto remade this film in colour as Der Mönch mit der Peitsche/The College Girl Murders (1967) with Uschi Gras in the lead role.
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